BREAKING: Sharks, Kane Reach Settlement

It’s really over.

Like, really over.

The San Jose Sharks announced today that they had reached a settlement with Evander Kane, in regards to the team’s termination of Kane’s Sharks contract last January. The NHLPA had filed a grievance on Kane’s behalf, but this agreement takes care of that.

“The San Jose Sharks have reached an agreement with Evander Kane regarding the termination of his NHL Standard Player Contract,” the team stated in a press release. “The agreement has been approved by the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association. We are satisfied that its terms will not adversely impact the team, either financially or competitively, in this or future seasons.”

The last point, of course, is critical to the San Jose Sharks, and Elliotte Friedman and Frank Seravalli provided further clarity on the point:

Sounds like Evander Kane will receive a one-time payment from #sjsharks and the cap penalty for San Jose will be retroactively applied to last season's salary cap.#sjsharks ended last season with just under $5 million in space, according to @CapFriendly.

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) September 16, 2022

Sorry, let me correct that: On Evander Kane: original SJ deal was $19M in cash over next three years. Current EDM deal is $16.5M over next three years. It is believed settlement will address that gap

— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) September 16, 2022

Essentially, it sounds as if the San Jose Sharks have somehow escaped present and future cap penalties from the Kane contract by paying him the difference between what they owed him and what he’s making with Edmonton now — and somehow applying that cap hit backwards.

So the Sharks basically have got away with Kane’s contract scot-free, save for about $2.5 million dollars of real money but zero meaningful cap penalties.

The most similar recent incident was the Mike Richards’ settlement seven years ago, and according to Friedman back then, teams were howling about how the Los Angeles Kings got out of Richards’s contract with minimal cap penalties. San Jose got a much better deal than Los Angeles here.

The San Jose Sharks, including Mike Grier, have no further comment on this settlement at this time.

San Jose Hockey Now has reached out to other teams to gauge their receptiveness to this settlement.

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly told SJHN: “The League is obviously comfortable with the terms of the settlement and has approved it. If we had had CBA concerns, we would not have signed off on the settlement.”

Kane’s agent Dan Milstein declined comment.

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— Evander Kane (@evanderkane) September 16, 2022